Berlin

Dienstag, 30. April 2013

"The list is the origin of culture" was once said or written by Umberto Ecco. So I don't feel quite as bad anymore when I think that I actually started my blog because I saw it as a perfect way to publish lists, fling them into the universe for everybody to know what I like (kids, especially the two girls I share my life with, my garden, the humming of bees in the meadow, cherries, The United States of America, Richmond/Virginia, sushi, journals, books, swimming, lakes, the ocean, movies) or things I don't like (stress, pain, people who want to convince me to do things I already know I don't like, toothache, reading glasses, fanatics, television, coca cola, fascists). Lists of favourite movies, favourite books, favourite places, favourite music.....I can post them and enjoy that so many people like to check them out. I feel I inspire others like they inspire me when I read their lists. I do not just love to write down lists, I am also excited to read those of others.
Since I found out that life for me was way too complex to handle it, I started to write down lists of chores and duties. That was when I became a mother. There were so many chores during one normal day that I tended to forget half of them, so I started to write them on several lists on my desk, which gave me a feeling of control and power. Especially when I put them into the order in which they should be done. On lists in those days you would find things like: 1. taking a shower (its been 5 days and you smell), 2. laundry, 3. mobbing kitchen floor, 4. paying phone bill from last month, 5. vaccuuming hallway...)
The years before I became a mother were not a listless nirvana or something. I jotted down lists in the back of my journals from the time when I started to keep journals (1976). But they were never lists of chores or duties, rather they were written down collections of the highlights of my life:Lists of all the people I had met during the course of the journal, there was a male and a female list of course, with the cities or places they were from, added behind their names. Lists of men I really found interesting (Robert de Niro, Lothar from my physics class, Jim Morrison). Lists of places I had been too, (Leverkusen, Cologne, Aachen, Bonn, Amsterdam, Bavaria). Lists of places I wanted to visit (Asia, Africa, America, Sweden). Lists of my favourite songs, which you can nowadays find here and which is so far the alltime favourite post of my blog. Lists of names for my future children (male/female), lists of books I should read (I remember the thrilling moment when I met a guy who used to read all day and night and he volunteered to make a list for me with all the books he felt one should have read before turning 18 - sixtyfive books and I checked them off one by one (mostly they were by Hesse, Frisch, Dürrenmatt, but also philosophers like Sartre, Kant, Heidegger)...so in this former life the lists weren't filled with duties and chores but rather with fun things. I like to read them now and get again a taste of my former life. I might even publish them here.By now I write lists for everything, even lists about the lists I am keeping in order to not get lost between them or lists of lists I should start like: list of my favourite tv shows over the past decades (for example: The Waltons), lists of stores I should check out, list of favourite actresses and actors, to name only a few.
"I perceive value, I confer value, I create value, I even create — or guarantee — existence. Hence, my compulsion to make “lists.” The things (Beethoven’s music, movies, business firms) won’t exist unless I signify my interest in them by at least noting down their names.

Nothing exists unless I maintain it (by my interest, or mypotential interest). This is an ultimate, mostly subliminal anxiety. Hence, I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province." Susan Sontag

Freitag, 26. April 2013

This morning, while reading my daily quote from Barbara Abercrombies A Year of writing dangerously I read there about the necessity for solitude in order to remain sane and keep writing. Without solitude, no art. Without solitude, no sanity. I couldn't agree more. Its a sometimes painful truth for me in this busy life we all have to lead that it can be so very diffucult to find enough solitude for my sanity.
Among others she mentioned Naomi Shihab Nyes poem The Art of Disappearing as a written testimony dealing with how to have these times of solitude often "against" the demands of others, and ones life in general.
I really liked this poem. It expressed a lot of what I was thinking, what I was longing for, what I was trying to express myself during the past maybe fifteen years, could be even more.
The Art of Disappearing. I want to learn it. I want to be able to just disappear in the middle of everything. When everybody in my office is dealing with bureaucratic demands I, in my heart of hearts find less interesting then a louse on one of my daughters heads, I want to disappear. Find a place away from this ever more complex everyday demands of a life in the 21st century. I can not see the value of many things I do, I have to do in order to maintain this life in this society, in this city.
I want to remember the ocean underneath the monastery of Belem. Its absolute beauty and quietude. This scenery is the perfect translation of how I want to live, into a landscape.
Couldn't the quietude of Belem be the basic soundtrack of my life?
Instantly it becomes clear that this has nothing to do with the outside world. Instantly I understand that I could have this sound even in the midst of a crazy office day in the middle of crazy Berlin. It is a question of my inner being. Couldn't the quietude of Belem be the basic sound of my inner world? Why is it not? It's not the others. Though I often think it's exactly them.

Maybe it is not so much about the art of disappearing but about loving. Oneself of course too. And others. If you truly love yourselves and others, there is not much left you have to worry about.
The time one needs in order to become quiet is not as worthy if you have to drag it away from others in a mind frame of violence almost, as if you had to fight against an enemy in order to survive sanely. The same amount of time will be much more beautiful and quiet if you can take it in an act of confident grace. Which is possible, I know that.

This morning I disappeared, no phone, no door bell, only 5 minutes of internet. After reading, I wrote a little bit in my diary, then I did Yoga, my favourite position being right now "The Crow". Challenging. Not that I can hold it for more then 2 seconds but in my book it says: the crow is the position to teach you that the impossible is possible. I think this is the reason I like it so much and am totally determined to become as good as the woman in the video.
Afterwards I sat in quiet meditation for 30 minutes and while I was doing this I of course was thinking. One of the most electrifying thoughts I had was "You should love, just love, then everything would be fine." I don't know where my thoughts during meditation come from. It is often like a deep pond they are surfacing from and a second later the next not so profound thoughts arrive and in my mind I am writing the grocery list. Not so electrifying. But this thought was beautiful and all worries I had nurtured during the past week seemed to dissolve in its wake. At least for a while.
After the meditation I started my computer to write. First I checked on my mails and my facebook account and there it was again, posted by my friend Amy from Richmond, the Thomas Merton quote, the thought from the pond:

"Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbor worthy if anything can." - Thomas Merton -

And it felt like, the universe nodded in my direction. "You were right, Susanne! Keep going that way. It will lead you where you need to go!" So maybe the impossible will become possible for me step by step, and instead of fighting against life and others for what I feel I need, to be happy, instead of disappearing, I could try to pour my love into the universe - which doesn't have anything to do with giving up myself - rather the opposite. On the other hand: it has everthing to do with giving up my expectations about what others should do or not do, how the world should behave towards me. Reading the Merton quote I realized how much of the basic undertone of my life is about disappointment and every disappointment is about expecting. Every expectation is unjust and therefore my life is, instead of as quiet as the view in Belem an inner turmoil. Expectation, Disappointment, Inquiry if the disappointing person is still worthy my love, of course not, bastard....and so on.
So the art of disappearance is not bad after all. It gives not only time for writing, but really for sorting through the turmoil and finding back to the quietude in which we all were born, in which we all still exist, in the middle of a crazy day in the 21st century.
So if anybody invites you to a party this weekend remember what parties are like before answering and if anybody says: we should get together again ask: why? And if by these confident means or others you gain some solitude, enjoy it.
Remember the song of a bird,
the hum of a bee,
the sound of the wind in a cherry tree.

Freitag, 19. April 2013

"The place of stillness that you have to go to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world." -Jonathan Franzen-

I want to become still enough to hear myself. I always wanted that. I don't think I have been to this place very often yet.
My Self is not that constant stream of comments and words running through my mind, I fear, even when I am asleep. I often wake up so exhausted, that I am pretty sure, thoughts have been rushing through my head all night long. Like a herd of very young, very wild horses. That is not My Self. My Self lives much deeper, under all those layers of protective tissue, much much deeper. It is this stillness, in which I connect with everything that matters. This Everything has not so much to do with the demands of my everyday life. Then again: it has everything to do with my everyday life and its demands.
Everything is about love.
Everything is about knowing what matters.
Everything is about becoming still.
Everything is about opening my heart.
I waste too much time on Facebook, on mails I do not even want to get, but those are minor wastes compared to the huge amount of energy and time I invest in two things: getting wound up in the lifes of other people (which can take the form of gossip but has other forms as well) and making plans for the next million moments instead of just being in the one at hand, right now.
I actually believe I could straight go into a pretty impressive state of enlightenment if I could stop these two habits:

1. Other people. Nobody believes how bad other people behave all the time, how often they treat me wrong, how often they hurt my feelings. And if they do not hurt me, they for sure do anything wrong in their own lifes, so I have to get upset about them and worry my head off about solutions for their problems.
To complain about other people is a habit I inherited from my mother. She cultivated it to an extreme I am sure I will not master in this life. Her stream of words, not just in her head but to the outside world, consisted of not much more but complaints about other people, for decades, actually for all those decades I have known her. I think she must have hurt a lot all her life. She started this stream of words before my conscious memory set in. With my first consciousness I dived right into this already existing stream. I started my first diary mostly out of the necessity to cope with my mothers complaints, which she freely shared with me every day. My room was really small. When she entered with this stream of words running out of her mouth into my little room, within seconds I felt I could not breathe anymore. The room was filled with negativity. So one of the first sentences I wrote in my first diary was: "Mother, please be still!"
To complain about others is a wonderful way to keep away from your Self, your true feelings, the deep hurt you are suffering, the here and now. As long as you have gossip and complaints to spread you don't have to engage with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world. In fact: you even have people to point your finger at because they are personally responsible for the unmanageableness of your world. They hurt you, they behave wrong, your world would be great without them, or at least without their behaviour. If they could change everything would be, well: perfect, basically.
2. The second thing, my stream of words is about is: all those things I should and could and would be doing if I hadn't to do, what I am doing at the moment. So when I am reading a book, part of my consciousness is already watering the flowers on the balcony, opening my notebook to check on Facebook, writing in my diary about my day and/or my mother, going to the groceryshop to get some milk....I don't think I spend much time in the moment really. I am basically always elsewhere, and usually I am in several locations at the same time. Multitasking genius that I am!
My mind is very busy, always. I must say this has not gotten any better since I discovered Facebook. My attention span has become even shorter. Yesterday, when I was actually at my desk to revise some of my poems, I found myself thirty minutes later listening to President Obama's speech about the senates' decision against background checks for people who want to buy a gun via internet. Not that this speech and the whole subject isn't from high value and interest, but of course within seconds I had been on a different planet, totally distracted from what I wanted to do initially (revising my poems), far away from my writing, my self and frankly: I did not know on what exact path I had gotten from my writing to Obama. On other days it has been this quality, that made me write a good poem, because on my distracted path through the offerings of for example Facebook or lets just say: the world, I found something that inspired me so deeply, that I entered a state of concentration not so ususal for me and wrote my soul out.
Still: My ideal is what Agnes Martin spoke about here, in this video I posted a few weeks ago. I want to be able to be still, alone and concentrated, turning my back to the outside world, to my thoughts about it, so that I hear myself, my deep self, my beloved and loving self, I want to dive into my inner stillness, so that the best things feel free to come to me.

Dienstag, 2. April 2013

After finding Margaret Atwoods ten rules for writing fiction I sat at my desk (did I mention that I have new glasses, since this morning actually, its the kind of glasses which make you remember that you are old: when I look through the upper part, I can see the house on the other side of my street, I can see my neighbor sitting at her desk, when I look through the lower part, I can see the screen - if I get lost between the two parts of my glasses, my world turns kinda blurry. I am a bit nauseous since this morning, but it is o.k., I am hangin' in), so I sat at my desk, played with the glasses, thought about Margaret Atwoods rules, blurred my vision in all directions several times, got dizzy, and thought about my rules to writing, not just fiction, really anything. I came up with eleven rules. Here they are:

Keep a notebook, write in it as often as possible, about everything that matters to you (this morning, before picking up the glasses, I started # 150, I am not kidding, I started writing into notebooks when I was 12, I mentioned the story about this before right here. I have them with me most of the time, not in my office though. Unfortunately my job is getting a bit demanding lately and its hard to find time for writing there. They would not like me sitting in the office and taking private notes. If I absolutely have to though I open my blog and start a new post entry. They never notice, because I have an office job. So writing in my blog might be about anything, even work related.

Don't feel silly if you only write into a certain kind of notebooks, I do, my favourites are these. I used to force my US-friends to mail them to me, or bring them over whenever they came to visit, I even took running out of them as one excuse to fly to the US. I mean some people buy their shoes in Paris, I buy my notebooks in Virginia, alright!? Unfortunately I found a paper shop around the corner from my office now that sells them, so this excuse is not soooo valid anymore. Unless you are also into a certain kind of pen, which I am. I really do like those. So, what can I say, I have to fly to the US from time to time to stock up. Writing in a certain kind of notebook with a certain kind of pen can get your writing juices flowing - if you are a bit like me. I still write mostly everything by hand first.

Flying to the US from time to time - it is just the chemistry between me and the country I suppose, but I find it very inspiring to be there. I find its people very inspiring too and nothing inspires me more then an american bookstore like Barnes & Nobles at the Washington DC Union Station - fantastic! But even better are the small ones in little cities like Fountain Bookstore in Richmond/Virginia

Read as much as you can, everything you want to read and look how the good authors, the ones you like, do it. Read what you want to write.

I am with Margaret Atwood on the exercising thing - also walking, swimming, everything that moves your body will also move your thoughts. It is important to change your perspective often - I really am into yoga nowadays and I prefer the postures where you somehow end up upside down.

Travelling is also a great means of changing perspectives - and I mean not just to the US, just travel everywhere, even in Germany, go on trains, by car, by foot, on airplanes, move and collect impressions, colours, smells, people, stories, experiences, yourself in new circumstances.

Meditation is very helpful - quiets that inner voice, sometimes at least, and lets one look into deeper layers of ones life (which is not bad) but also of ones writing (which is on certain days even better).

Start a blog - got me to writing more then I did ever before. Also got me away from my novel, which I hate right now, which I will continue to write nonetheless.

Do not complain in your writing, people do not want to feel sorry for the people they read about.

Do not write I I I all the time - people do not want to feel like they are reading your diary.

Gardening and being in my little hut in the country, nature, the voices of all kinds of birds, having my hands in the earth, harvesting, reading under the cherry tree in full blossom - all this and much more I do need to write! It is nurturing.

April 25th, 2014: I tend to reread my posts, because I often like them and they contain a lot of thoughts, I want to think again and again. And sometimes I even find more interesting things to make the post even BETTER (if thats possible, mind you).
Here I found some other writer's ten rules for writing fiction and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them and will take some of them seriously to heart: Hilary Mantel (I've been meaning to read her Wolf Hall for a year now. It is waiting beside my bed, and I think, it will be read by the end of summer! Jonathan Franzen, whose books are also on my to-read-list!